


The Twenty Deaths of Brienne of Tarth

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: 55 Fiction, Angst, Canon Compliant, Death, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 18:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What could have been, what may yet be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Twenty Deaths of Brienne of Tarth

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: this fic is a fluff- and sunshine-free zone. Spoilers through ADWD, post-canon speculation, general melancholy galore. (Except the last one. Maybe.) Each vignette is exactly 55 words long, because I have a thing for short, strict forms. Nothing here is owned by me. Feel free to let me know which ones are your, well, not favorites, but you know…

**Birth defect**

The babe barely draws its first breath before it is clear to the maester that this one will not live. Something about the lungs, the water-logged heart. A pity. The mother was so hopeful, and Lord Selwyn too. The tiny fist snatches at the maester’s thumb, lusty, stubborn, wanting to live. A very great pity. 

 

**Drowning**

It is a blue-skied day, a beautiful day. Just a hint of breeze, perfect for fishing and swimming. Nobody knows where the wave comes from, how the boat rocks. The lad, Galladon, is eight, and a good swimmer. He climbs back into the boat, notices only then his little sister is gone. She sinks, unseen.

 

**Greyscale**

She cannot move her tongue in her mouth, her lips are shingle at low tide. She can hear her father arguing with the maester, forbidding him to cut her. _Cut whom?_ she wonders. _Cut what?_ She tries to lick her lips, to ask for water. Her throat sounds like stones grinding. Breath is too heavy.

 

**Training accident**

She is ten, better with a tourney sword than boys aged ten-and-twelve. They train with her, only because she is Lord Selwyn’s daughter. She has not learned the lance yet, but she will not run from a challenge. The horse shies, a stranger to tilting like her. The ground is covered in stones. She falls. 

 

**Duel**

Ser Humfrey could be her father, except he has neither kindness nor skill with a mace. She is young and confident in two things only: her strength and ability. She breaks two of his bones. Before she can break a third, she overreaches. His mace is already falling, caves in the side of her head. 

 

**Wager**

Randyll Tarly cannot be bothered. Silly woman needs lessoning. Not that she ever hears of this. One night, two or three or ten of the knights who wagered a gold dragon break open a cask of wine, get bored. She is torn apart. What bleeding begins, shame and an evil humor in the blood finish. 

 

**Shadow**

She does what a member of the Kingsguard is sworn to do, steps between her king and the threat. Even though she can barely see it in the dark tent, all the candles blown out as one. Even though she cannot move as quickly as it. A steel gorget cannot stop it. Neither can she. 

 

**Femoral artery**

Chained, gaunt, furious, he is good. She is bigger and stronger and has both hands free, but still he leads her a merry dance. She draws first blood, but not to kill. He has sworn no vows to protect her. It feels like the merest scratch, but blood gushes from her thigh in a torrent. 

 

**Rape**

He tells her to go somewhere far away inside. It does not help the first time or any time after. He says nothing when they take her the first night, watches as her eyes empty out like drying pools. She goes so far away inside, she never comes back. It is not a quick death. 

 

**Bear**

The sword is wooden and pointless, as is her refusal to just let it be done. She knows she cannot survive this, knows it will not be a good, dignified death. It is the jeering that hurts the most, far more than the animal’s claws. She is truly alone, expecting no succor, hoping for none. 

 

**Slaughter**

She does not trust the two hedge knights she meets on the road to Duskendale, as why should she? These are troubled times, bleeding times, and one of them is a fool, and the other is sullen. Still and all, she must sleep. They slit her throat sometime in the hour between moonset and sunrise. 

 

**Premonition**

She ignores the sea soughing through the honeycomb of caves. There are no dead heads whispering about a magic sword. The skill in the arm which wields the sword is what matters, Oathkeeper is too precious to unsheathe in front of the likes of Nimble Dick. When they come at her, she is too slow. 

 

**Infection**

The shock of it should have finished her off. To have a man who is not a man chew and eat her flesh, and live to tell the tale – no one should have to face that. She never gets to speak of it. Her tale etched into her cheek, the words burn her up, fever-bright. 

 

**Hanging**

Some choices are no choices at all. She knows this when they put the noose around her neck. The knowledge sinks into her flesh with the rope, and then she almost does choose. Almost. They call her wench, oathbreaker, Kingslayer’s whore, but she does not speak. Not for lack of breath. She will not speak. 

 

**Oath**

She never should have let it come to this, brought him to this circle of jeering faces. They dance by torchlight for a dead thing’s wrath. He stabs her, quick and sure through the heart. She lets him. Close enough to kiss, taste blood from her mouth. The only time she gets to hold him. 

 

**Burning**

Ice burns her lips, the skin of her fingers, she is flaking away with cold. Fire is a blessing, a hope, the only life in the Long Winter. Not this kind of fire. _They should have been more specific in their prayers_ , Jaime mutters. She watches the dragon soar, does not see it descend, roaring. 

 

**Battle**

They say the Unsullied do not bleed. They do, but they do not die. They are the Stranger incarnate. She has taken a quarrel to the shoulder, another to the leg. A blade lights up her skin like wildfire. She looks around for Jaime. He is not there when a warhammer shatters her sword arm. 

 

**Childbirth**

No maiden was ever protected by her maidenhead. Its loss was nothing to weep over, quite the contrary. She thinks pain and blood a fair price to pay for the kind of joy she has known, neither expected nor hoped for. A dance unlike any other. Breathless, she realizes she does not know these steps. 

 

**Old age**

Lady of Tarth, she is now, speculation on the state of her maidenhead the stuff of tavern gossip. She swirls the bitter dregs in her cup, she has never liked wine. The feast continues around her, she is as useful as a figurehead on a sinking ship. She rests her rheumy eyes for a moment. 

 

**Sleep**

It can happen at any time. She remembers this whenever she beds down, almost a prayer. Warmed by furs, by his arm lying heavy on her stomach, by nothing at all. The night is long and dark, and shadows crowd into the morning. She does not dream, not much. Every breath could be her last.


End file.
